Already, elephants and sunrise brighten my morning as I leave this place, Simba Safari Camp. Safari journeys of the last month are over…. Almost. 

As we drive along on the roadway through Queen Elizabeth park, we spy a few waterbuck.  Then LIONS!!  Mom with 4 very small cubs. We stop. Taking pictures. Looking through binoculars. And see a second female lioness. They are on the move. 7 of them are counted.  Closer to us. We move.  They move.  We sit.  They sit.  Buffalo walk through.  They watch. Two babies, 1 month old run out of bush.  There is a few older cubs, one with a limp.  The little tiny ones frolicking in the grass.  Very sweet moment captured together. Lions, some with collar so they can be tracked.  Community may poison them (reasons of revenge for killing the animals on their farms) so numbers do not increase naturally.  Lions migrate to Congo and back.  

Another herd of elephants in the tall grass eating from acacia… with a small young one with them. We drive on.

Mongoose on side of the road, we slow down. More elephants walking on straight line.  Toward the village … for their garden. 

Stop at Kyambura for a view picture down of the valley and national park. Nyunga crater lake from eruption 1000 years ago. 

Baboons alongside of road. People stopped to view chimpanzees. Tea plantations. 

Lunch stop :). 

Off road about 4 pm. Up. Up

Goats. Other domestic animals, the view, the sun, the trees, the reddish dirt road, beautiful greenery, local people, women carrying loads on their head dressed in color.  Motorcycles, kids in school uniform, goats on leashes, cows, eating alongside the road.  Chickens. Fences. Terraced mountainside. Sheep. Children.  Trees, rocks that have slid down the mountainside.  In spots there’s not much to drive on.  We keep going, through villages, by fallen trees, clusters of goats, tea planted in terraces on the mountain. Pigs. Cows. Goats. Young children tending them.

Twice a week it rains hard here. Evidence in the deep  ditches in the roads. 

Sweet young smiley faces and waving hands of children as we drive by.  The adults don’t seem to notice or care much.

There are people, mostly young women and school aged children that I see, breaking larger rocks into smaller 1 to 2 inch rock cubes and stacking them.  Apparently a truck will come by to gather the smaller broken rocks.  If their pile is selected, they will get paid.  At some point they will receive some money for the work. 

According to our guide, every day there are people coming here to see the gorillas. He adds that 95% of the people who come to Uganda do so to see the gorillas.

We arrive at Gorilla Valley Lodge is our next accommodation for two nights for the purpose of gorilla trekking. For some on our tour, the reason if this trip.